If you watched the Super Bowl — or really, any major sporting event these last few years — you’ve encountered an advertising blitz of gambling apps, websites, and services. It’s not just during the actual game, either, as searching for anything sports-related, like stats and scores, will bring up banners, text-based ads, and more.
This means that the World Cup will be an absolute whirlwind: not just for the players on the pitch, but for gambling brands trying to capture a few seconds of attention in a sea of digital distractions. Winning that “share of screen” is a high-stakes game of its own.
To help you cut through the noise, we’ve tapped into the expertise of our lead performance pros at Realize, advertising account manager Ana Ligeiro and advertising sales manager Rafael Saboia. They live and breathe the iGaming and sports betting world, helping global brands grow by using smart predictive modeling and fresh creative ideas. By breaking down their work with successful partners like Brazilian iGaming platform Bet7k, we’ve identified four proven ways to help your brand take the lead during the big tournament.
4 Ways Gambling Brands Can Capture Attention and Drive Sign-Ups During the World Cup
1. Leverage GenAI to Break the “Static” Noise
During the World Cup, sports fans are scrolling through a mountain of content. If your ad is just a flat, static image, it’s likely to get ignored (that’s what we call “banner blindness.”) To win the click, you need to disrupt that scrolling pattern with a bit of movement.
The Strategy
You don’t need a massive production budget to introduce action: By using Realize’s GenAI AdMaker, you can take your existing “raw” photos — like a simple shot of a stadium, or a player — and add subtle motion. Think flickering stadium lights, or grass turf kicking up.
“You can use this quick fix and it will work perfectly,” advises Ligeiro. “In fact, there are massive betting companies that rely solely on these adjustments. You simply extend the image and let the AI work — you don’t even need to put a request in with your designer.”
In terms of the creative itself, Marllon Angelis, of Bet7k, agrees that authenticity beats high-end editing, saying that, “The ‘raw’ creative is what sells: The more Photoshop you have, the worse it performs.”
Why It Works
Using AI-enhanced motion ads acts as an instant boost to primary performance, quickly and easily making imagery more dynamic while ensuring it’s still “authentic” enough to bypass ad blindness.
2. Own the Auction with “Championship” Campaign Structures
If you want to grow, you need to go where the action is. Setting up dedicated campaigns specifically for the tournament (also known as Championship/Campeonatos structures) is like putting your best players on the field. Data shows these specific setups can drive nearly 20% of a brand’s total sign-ups during the tournament. A single flagship tournament creative featuring a brand mascot can drive approximately 10% of total sign-ups alone.
The Strategy
Use Maximize Conversions bidding. Think of this as an automated assistant that ensures your ad is always visible when fans are most active. “100% of our betting clients are running Maximize Conversions,” explains Ligeiro. “It ensures you’re always inside the auction — it’s the magic formula for betting brands.”
While this may sometimes seem more expensive at first, it pays off over time. “The [initial] cost-per-acquisition was higher, but the user lifetime value was much better,” Angelis notes. “The Realize user is different.”
Why It Works
When you stay competitive in the auction during those peak moments, you’re doing more than just getting seen — you’re connecting with a higher tier of users across the open web. These aren’t just “one-and-done” casual players, they’re the kind of high-value fans who stick around for the long haul, which is exactly what keeps your long-term return on ad spend (ROAS) growing.
3. Maximize Efficiency Through Aggressive Remarketing
The World Cup moves fast. Someone might click your ad during halftime, get distracted, and forget to finish their sign-up. Remarketing is your way of giving them a friendly nudge to come back.
The Strategy
Use remarketing to catch this “lost” traffic with lower-friction messaging. A clear, direct “PLAY NOW” call-to-action (CTA) works well. In top-performing setups, this specific button drives virtually all conversion volume. “Remarketing is a campaign type that delivers excellent CPAs,” Ligeiro points out. “If acquisition costs are high, we apply Target CPA to significantly improve efficiency.”
Indeed, Bet7k saw massive success here, sharing that, “When I ran remarketing, the FTD (first-time deposit) cost was approximately 11% of the average lead cost. It’s an extremely positive result for the house.”
Why It Works
Giving a direct “Play Now” nudge to warm leads — those folks who’ve already checked you out — is a total efficiency win. It’s much cheaper to get them across the finish line than starting from scratch with a brand-new audience, plus it helps you bring in a much higher volume of sign-ups overall.
4. Drive Relevance with Dynamic “Smart” Personalization
Fans want to feel like you’re talking directly to them. By using dynamic macros, your ads can automatically update based on where the user is or what day it is.
The Strategy
Integrate dynamic parameters such as “The favorite in ${city}$” or “${dayofweek}$ is your lucky day!” in your ads. It’s simple to create this withicn Realize. When building your campaign, insert specific placeholders into your headlines. Realize then does the heavy lifting, swapping those tags for the reader’s real-time info the second the ad appears on their screen. It’s an easy way to turn a broad message into a local, timely invitation without any extra manual work.
“The user who comes through Realize is much more qualified — we’re a constant in the user journey,” says Saboia. “Sometimes, a user sees an ad on Meta, but Realize is always there in their journey.”
Why It Works
Think of personalization as a way to close the gap between a user and your brand. When your ad feels local and hits at exactly the right time, it puts the user in the right frame of mind. This makes the move from catching up on sports news to actually making a deposit feel like a natural next step, rather than a jarring interruption.
The Strategy In Action
In mid-2025, Bet7k, a leading Brazilian online casino, made the strategic decision to shift from focusing on first time deposit cost per acquisition (FTD CPA) to optimizing their campaigns towards return on advertising spend (ROAS). While this change aligned better with long-term user value, the campaign’s early results didn’t meet expectations, prompting the team to explore new creative approaches.
Using Realize GenAI AdMaker, Bet7k tested subtle motion to specific creatives within their existing Max ROAS campaign, making the imagery more dynamic and capturing attention more effectively in placements across the open web.
The impact was immediate: The AI-enhanced motion ads drove the strongest performance within the entire campaign on both FTD CPA and ROAS, demonstrating the important role creative innovation can play even in already performance-optimized setups.
Why This Worked
Motion drives attention: Subtle animation helped the creative to stand out on busy publisher sites and increase engagement in competitive open web environments.
AI-enhanced creative testing: Realize’s AI tools enabled rapid experimentation and enhancement of existing creatives without heavy production lift.
Creative as a performance lever: Even in the mature campaigns, fresh creative formats unlocked incremental gains, while pairing motion creative with a Max ROAS campaign amplified performance-focused outcomes.
Key Takeaways
For World Cup success, remember the four following rules:
- Motion is mandatory: Static ads get lost in the World Cup noise. Use AI to add subtle motion to “raw” photos. Authenticity captures more eyes than heavy editing.
- Bid for visibility: Use Maximize Conversions bidding within tournament-specific campaigns to stay competitive when traffic spikes.
- Retarget aggressively: Don’t let interested users slip away. Use remarketing with a bold “PLAY NOW” CTA to win back users who dropped off mid-game.
- Personalize at scale: Use dynamic macros to make your ads feel timely and relevant to each specific user, fostering a stronger connection and driving higher-quality sign-ups.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Why should I prioritize motion-based creatives over static banners for high-traffic events?
During big tournaments, fans are so locked into scores and news that they often tune out plain, static banners, a phenomenon known as banner blindness. Motion, on the other hand, acts as a pattern interrupt that snaps their attention back to your ad, which usually has a higher click-through rate (CTR) and lower cost-per-click (CPC).
For high-performance campaigns on the open web, tools like Realize GenAI AdMaker make this a breeze by letting you quickly add movement to your already successful images. It’s an easy way to see an immediate performance lift without the long wait of traditional video production, ensuring your ads stay as current as the daily World Cup updates.
How do I maintain a stable CPA when competition and bidding costs spike during the World Cup?
It’s common for advertisers to experience auction shock during the World Cup, where sudden spikes in competition send ad prices through the roof. To keep your budget in check, the best move is to split your spending between reaching new audiences and using high-efficiency remarketing to bring back previous visitors. This balance helps average out your costs so you aren’t overpaying for every sign-up.
When running high-performance campaigns with Realize on the open web, we recommend using the Maximize Conversions bidding strategy, along with Target CPA guardrails. Think of this as a smart assistant that knows exactly when to lean in: It bids aggressively for fans who are most likely to convert, but automatically holds back on less promising impressions. This keeps your costs stable and your efficiency high, even during the most action-packed moments of the tournament.
Is it better to target sports fans directly, or broader lifestyle audiences?
Targeting sports fans directly seems like a no-brainer, but it’s also the most expensive way to play. That’s why savvy advertisers search for “lookalike” audiences or specific interest groups: think news, finance, or even gaming. In these pockets of the web, competition is usually much clower, but the desire to place a bet is still very much alive.
For more advanced campaigns, Realize uses Predictive Audiences to find high-value users based on their actual reading habits. This allows you to reach potential bettors on premium news and entertainment sites, catching them in a headspace where they aren’t already being bombarded by ads from every other brand in the business.
